Optical focusing is often a slow process due to the delay inherent in moving mechanically a camera's lens until an image is in focus.
Although liquids are considered an exotic choice for lens material, there is interest in liquid lenses for applications in adaptive optics requiring fast response or for applications that require miniature, cost-effective optics. The interfaces of liquids have good optical qualities because of surface tension, which dominates gravity in the sub-milliliter scale, creating interfaces that are nearly perfectly spherical and optically smooth. The demand for high-performance consumer products such as cell phones and video recorders, as well as applications in surveillance and defense, has spurred an intense search for viable, lightweight adaptive optics. There is thus much interest in the use of liquids for adaptive optics.
Existing strategies use liquid lenses after transient oscillations have dampened. The challenge with this existing liquid lens approach is two-fold. The first issue is to overcome the liquid inertia to enable a rapid state change, and the second, is to minimize the time it takes for transients induced during stoppage to subside. Many systems use brute force activation methods to effect a shape change, creating undesired transient motion, which then necessitates a high-dissipative media to dampen them out.